Don't make yourself an easy target of crime: police board chair

Winnipeggers have to stop making themselves easy targets of crime if they want to live in a safer city, the chairman of the Winnipeg Police Board says.

David Asper, appointed to the police board last year by Mayor Brian Bowman and city council, says people have a duty to stay safe and are abdicating that responsibility when they leave themselves open to crime.

“If you want to have a safe community, a truly safe community, and if you want a reduced crime rate, and you want to be safer, there is an individual and collective non-police responsibility to do that,” Asper told the Winnipeg Sun in an interview. “Like you can not leave your gym bag visible in the back seat of your car, you can not have your face buried in your phone walking downtown where you’re an easy target to get your phone stolen, or your backpack, or whatever, because you’re not paying attention.”

Asper says people have to start taking more responsibility for their own actions and rely less on police to improve safety in Winnipeg, which scores among the highest in the country on Statistics Canada’s crime severity index.

“We as a community have to get in this game and be part of the solution,” said Asper. “Lock you doors, lock your windows, close your windows, don’t make yourself a target.”

The former Winnipeg Blue Bombers board member who has taught law at the University of Manitoba says that’s an important piece of the puzzle when the city debates how to manage police resources.

“A lot of the crime, and therefore a lot of the activity of the (police) service, is where we’ve made ourselves and easy target,” said Asper. “I’m not blaming the victim, I’m inviting people to get into the game of public safety.”

Police are already tied up with a lot of non-core policing activity, including responding to mental health cases where no criminal activity is involved, said Asper. And while the city needs to have a fulsome debate about how police resources are used, the public also has a responsibility to do more to make themselves safer, he said.

“Where there are steps that we can take to make the community and ourselves safer, we should be taking them,” said Asper. “The whole idea that I don’t have to do that because the police will look after it I think is … an abdication of part of our role in society.”

This Week's Flyers

Comments

We encourage all readers to share their views on our articles and blog posts. We are committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion, so we ask you to avoid personal attacks, and please keep your comments relevant and respectful. If you encounter a comment that is abusive, click the "X" in the upper right corner of the comment box to report spam or abuse. We are using Facebook commenting. Visit our FAQ page for more information.